completely separated from it, resembles it to a nicety. And now the subjective world of this perception is precisely so constituted in subjective, known space as the objective world in objective, infinite space. But the subjective world has this advantage over the objective, the knowledge that that space, outside there, is infinite; indeed it can also give beforehand most minutely and accurately the whole constitution or necessary properties of all relations which are possible, though not yet actual, in that space, and does not require to examine them. It can tell just as much with regard to the course of time, and also with regard to the relation of cause and effect which governs the changes in that external world. I think all this, when closely considered, turns out absurd enough, and hence leads to the conviction that that absolute objective world outside the head, independent of it and prior to all knowledge, which at first we imagined ourselves to conceive, is really no other than the second, the world which is known subjectively, the world of idea, as which alone we are actually able to conceive it. Thus of its own accord the assumption forces itself upon us, that the world, as we know it, exists also only for our knowledge, therefore in the idea alone, and not a second time outside of it.[1] In accordance, then, with this assumption, the thing in itself, i.e., that which exists independently of our knowledge and of every knowledge, is to be regarded as something completely different from the idea and all its attributes, thus from objectivity in general. What this is will be the subject of our second book.
On the other hand, the controversy concerning the reality of the external world considered in § 5 of the first
- ↑ I specially recommend here the passage in Lichtenberg's "Miscellaneous Writings" (Göthingen, 1801, vol. ii. p. 12): "Euler says, in his letters upon various subjects in connection with natural science (vol. ii. p. 228), that it would thunder and lighten just as well if there were no man present whom the lightning might strike. It is a very common expression, but I must confess that it has never been easy for me completely to comprehend it. It always seems to me as if the conception being were something derived from our thought, and thus, if there are no longer any sentient and thinking creatures, then there is nothing more whatever."
